Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind: Analyzing Inhumane Practices In Mississippi’S Correctional Institutions Due To Overcrowding, Understaffing, And Diminished Funding, Ariel A. Williams

Honors Theses

The purpose of this research is to examine the political, social, and economic factors which have led to inhumane conditions in Mississippi’s correctional facilities. Several methods were employed, including a comparison of the historical and current methods of funding, staffing, and rehabilitating prisoners based on literature reviews. State-sponsored reports from various departments and the legislature were analyzed to provide insight into budgetary restrictions and political will to allocate funds. Statistical surveys and data were reviewed to determine how overcrowding and understaffing negatively affect administrative capacity and prisoners’ mental and physical well-being. Ultimately, it may be concluded that Mississippi has high …

Beliefs Of Translators About Medical Spanish Pamphlets, Margaret Coulter

Honors Theses

This paper addresses the beliefs of professional Spanish medical translators regarding the use of dialect variation in medical Spanish translation and the resulting effects on the level of healthcare attained by Spanish speaking patients in the United States. The health gap between English-speaking and non-English patients is explored as it relates to inadequate translation of medical information and instructions leading to poorer health outcomes and higher readmission rates among Spanish speakers.

On Narrative Approaches To Conspiracy Theory, John Hydrisko

Honors Theses

This thesis handles narrative approaches to conspiracy theory. It provides an overview of conspiracy theory and narrative before affirming a relationship between the two. It then introduces Fenster’s work on conspiracy narrative before engaging with the considerations therein. After discussing the tradition of visualizing narrative structure, it applies these practices to conspiracy narrative. This application allows for a discussion of recent innovations within conspiracy narrative. By using the QAnon as a case study, the paper investigates the emergence of protagonism and non-narrativism within the genre. Ultimately, this investigation suggests that contemporary conspiracy narrative is both better suited to the modern …

Small-Family Mindset: An Analysis Of The Impact Of China's Family Planning Policies On Family Culture, Sarah Ansley Croft

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the impact of China’s family planning policies on women’s attitudes towards family culture and the implications on China today. The family planning policies began in the 1970s as an emergency measure intended to create a short-term voluntary small-family culture by decreasing fertility rates. My research, comprised primarily of primary and secondary qualitative sources, discusses the development and implementation of the policies, the economic reforms beginning in the 1980s, and their joint effects on fertility rates, sex ratio at birth, women’s liberation, and changes in family culture, particularly in rural areas. This study found that the family planning …

Story And Sorority: How Sisters Shape The Novels Of Jane Austen, Morgan Elizabeth Reid

Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the impact and use of sisters and sorority in the novels of Jane Austen, answering the question of how they are shaping the narratives of the stories. Focusing in particular on Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility, I highlight the ways that Austen’s writing crafts plots that rely upon sisters to function. Austen also uses sister figures to reveal the characteristics of her main protagonists and to express the themes she is most concerned about within each story. I also show Austen’s pattern of affirming the value and importance of …

Fakes, Forgeries, And Value Perception, Pearson Moore

Honors Theses

Fakes and forgeries generate a false sense of value in the art market that changes the perception of authentic works. Understanding the difference between a fake and a forgery is essential for explaining the schemes of deceivers who have fooled the art market into believing their work is of grandiose value and prestige. The creation of a forged piece or fake provenance documents requires immense artistic skill and a talent for breaking the rules. Examining famous figures and the criminal cases against them is a great way to work backwards from their “successes,” tracing the alleged origins of the piece’s …

Greco-Roman Paganism And Women Leaders: The Foundation Of Early Christian Art, Rowan Murry

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I explore the impact of Greco-Roman pagan motifs as well as women leaders and officials on the development of Early Christian art by analyzing catacomb paintings, sarcophagi, and minor arts such as finger rings and carved gemstones. I also discuss surviving primary sources written by Tertullian, Eusebius, St. Jerome, and Clement of Alexandria, to gain a better understanding of anti-art views in the first few centuries of the Church’s rise to power. These anti-art sentiments were often rooted in attempts to disassociate themselves from pagan practices while Early Christian art was emerging amongst the lower classes who …

Handfuls Of Sea Glass, Blair Madison

Honors Theses

HANDFULS OF SEA GLASS: A fiction novella that explores the themes of grief, friendship, and love through two high-school seniors, Denver and Eli, after they lose Amelia, their best friend and sister (respectively). (Under the direction of Beth Spencer)

To Be Haunted: A Collection Of Short Stories, Kallye Smith

Honors Theses

This thesis is a work of collected pieces of fiction that seek to explore what it means to be haunted. By exploring the concept of ghosts, the pieces in this collection attempt to take a fresh approach to the traditional paranormal story.

Fable In Action: A Discourse Analysis Approach To The Life Of Aesop, Martha Hamilton Mccafferty

Honors Theses

In this essay, I examine instances of fable-telling throughout the Life of Aesop in a new light by using linguistic theories from the subfield of Pragmatics in my analysis. I suggest that the author’s purpose in composing the Life of Aesop is to instruct his audience on how to use fable effectively, and that Aesop serves as both the positive and negative example for this lesson. I begin by considering the nature of fable and demonstrate why it is necessary to define fable in reference to the social action which it performs. I then address the complex position of fable …

Has Maize Overtaken Our Reality? A Personal Briefing, Biochemical Comparison, Agrigenomics, And History Of Maize, Nader Pahlevan

Honors Theses

Maize (Zea mays ssp. Mays) is a revolutionary cereal grain that has raced to the world’s most popular staple crop, transforming societies and impacting history. This paper aims to build and portray the story maize has created through its journey to world domination. The important details that encompass this literature are maize’s cultural significance in my life’s story, the comparison of various starches broken down into amylose and amylopectin ratios, a summative historical account on maize’s spread throughout numerous parts of the old world, and the genetical analysis of maize that explains the key features that have led …

A City Divided: A Gis-Informed Study Of Urban Planning In Amman, Jordan, Ella Lawson

Honors Theses

Amman, the capital of Jordan, faces an impending infrastructure crisis. The city is plagued by water shortages, a lack of affordable housing, extreme traffic congestion, and dwindling open space. Over the past seventy-five years, several urban planning commissions have attempted to address these issues through policy change and other municipal directives. These plans help illustrate the different forces at play in constructing the city—whether they be the residents themselves, city officials, or international consultants. All the plans use neighborhoods as a primary metric for measuring need and organizing development. Likewise, all the plans focus on the importance of green and …

Germania: The Nazi Party And The Third Reich Through The Lens Of Classical Architecture, Maggie L. Smith

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the influence of classical architectural styles and principles on architectural projects in Germany during the Third Reich. My research focuses on major projects completed by the state and does not delve into private buildings or other structures. All of the data was gathered from scholarly publications of repute and photographs to determine how Adolf Hitler’s regime utilized Greek and Roman stylistic elements in an attempt to revive the power and culture of Germany during a time of strife, as well as how Nazi architecture reflected Hitler’s personal ambition as dictator. Additionally, the thesis doubles as an expansion …

"The Unhappy Class Of Females": An Examination Of Non-Elite White Women In The Civil War-Era South, Reagan Elizabeth Whittington

Honors Theses

This thesis focuses on the perceptions and realities of non-elite white women in the South and how their lives and expectations changed from the antebellum years to the end of Reconstruction. There were many secondary sources consulted both before and during the research process for this thesis, and these sources are listed, alongside their significance, in the introduction. Most of the primary sources referenced for this thesis were newspapers printed in the South between 1850 and 1877, but United States census data and public records were also consulted. This thesis investigates how non-elite white women were expected to behave by …

Divine Or Demonic? A Social Approach To Epilepsy From Greco-Roman Antiquity To The Early Middle Ages, James Nicholas Sumrall

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to evaluate how epilepsy was defined, perceived and understood in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as how these ideas were adapted and changed during the early centuries of Christianity. To this end, the thesis is divided into six parts. The Introduction briefly explains epilepsy and discusses how the social approach method can be applied to the disease. Chapter I introduces the Hippocratic understanding of epilepsy and outlines the Greco-Roman religious concepts of pollution and purification, which frequently informed ancient perceptions of epilepsy. The first chapter also analyzes the general relationship between disability, disease and divine selection …

Of A Mustard Seed: The Portraits Of "Church-Going" Black Folks In The Rural South, Nakiyah T.M. Jordan

Honors Theses

I am a Black, queer, faith-driven artist from the rural parts of Southern Mississippi. Who I am greatly informs the work I make. I come from church fans and gas heaters, from winding backroads and yards full of “junk.” I come from flattened “get well soon” balloons as decor and piles of papers and things that will surely come in handy someday or another. This series of paintings is taken directly from snapshots of my family and church family over the years. Some are images from thirty years ago, and others are from just a few months ago. The work …

The Politics Of Water Resource Management: State-Guided Framing Of China’S South To North Water Diversion Project And Its Impact On Citizen Perception, Mary Barlow

Honors Theses

Due to China’s geographic and human-exacerbated water scarcity, government leaders have turned to the South to North Water Diversion Project (SNWDP) in order to ensure a reliable source of water for the country’s increasingly parched Northern cities and townships. This thesis examines this inter-basin water transfer project (soon to be the world’s largest) through the lens of how government actors have framed the project. This official framing analysis is presented in tandem with citizen perceptions observed through online commentary in order to evaluate how effective such framing has been. Through such analysis, this research observes a pattern of nationalism and …

Beyond Beccaria: Diverse Criticism Of The Death Penalty In The Sixteenth, Seventeenth, And Eighteenth Centuries, Amelia Lawrence

Honors Theses

Most scholarly work on the history of criticism of the death penalty focuses on Cesare. Beccaria’s famous treatise, On Crimes and Punishments, and its impact on future thinkers and abolition movements. This thesis examines other trends, thinkers, and movements involved in the criticism or abolition of capital punishment in sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century Europe. First, it argues that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries governments carefully orchestrated executions in order to foster acceptance of capital punishment. These attempts, however, were not entirely successful: early writings and trends reveal dissatisfaction with governments’ use of capital punishment. Second, it shows that during …

'Here We Start And In Jerusalem We Meet:' The Motivational And Organizational Influences Of Israel's Statehood Ontransnational Salafi Jihad, Charlotte Armistead

Honors Theses

The Israeli occupation of Palestine and its impact on the proliferation and longevity of transnational Salafi jihad is largely underestimated in current literature. In this thesis, I argue that Palestine, defined as both the nation and physical borders before the Balfour Declaration, largely contributed to the twentieth century revival of transnational Salafi jihad and is used by both Al Qaeda and ISIS as liberation and annihilation movements, respectively. In order to assess the motivational and organizational influences of the Israeli occupation of Palestine on transnational Salafi jihad, I examine the works of Abdullah Azzam, a selection of Osama Bin Laden’s …

The Congress Of Industrial Organizations: Operation Dixie And A Legacy Of Worker Activism, Trevor G. Porter

Honors Theses

Trevor George Porter: The Congress of Industrial Organizations: Operation Dixie and a Legacy of Worker Activism (Under the Direction of Dr. Jarod Roll)

The passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 overhauled United States labor law, and it shifted the balance of power in favor of organized labor. Seizing upon this monumental moment in history, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was founded with a mandate to “organize the unorganized”. The labor federation made its primary focus the mass production workers of America, many of whom had not previously been afforded the opportunity to join a union. This …

China, Xinjiang, And The Genocide Convention: The Fragility Of International Law, Lucy Kate Herron

Honors Theses

This paper examines China’s actions through the lens of the Genocide Convention to examine the whether the crimes of genocide are being committed against the Uyghur population. It contends that according to the Genocide Convention, China is committing genocide, and particularly through conditions, torture, and rape, against the Uyghur population. However, prosecuting a genocide in court would prove difficult due to China's laws and actions that can be used to defer accusations of genocide and problems with the Genocide Convention in the context of China and the Uyghurs.

Who Gets To Ride? A Case Study In Inequality And Public Transportation In Santiago, Chile, Melissa Sanguientti

Honors Theses

While the metro public transportation system in Santiago, Chile was intended to serve all citizens equally, this did not become a reality. Instead, the metro has become a symbol of the short comings and failures in the state's city planning and expansions, benefitting the richer areas of the city. With a grand promise that was never fulfilled, frustration grew over time. While smaller protests were targeting public transportation with the increase to the fare of the metro, protests sparked overnight in 2019. However, by looking at the travel patterns, commute times, spatial inequalities, decision-making of metro expansions, and comuna level …

Film Festivals And The Covid-19 Pandemic: How A Global Health Crisis Changed The United States Film Festival Circuit, Treviso M. Davis

Honors Theses

An essential step in the life cycle of a film, film festivals provide an organized opportunity for filmmakers to present a film to an audience, gain feedback on their work, develop a reputation in the film industry, network with other individuals in the field, and attract the attention of distributors. Fulfilling these purposes became drastically more difficult because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its effects will bring about lasting changes to the independent film landscape once the virus is not an immediate threat to the success of a festival. This thesis outlines strategies taken among film festival organizers in response …

Understanding German-Turkish Identity In The Context Of Deutschrap, Alena Tien Vu

Honors Theses

Since its emergence in the 1980s, Deutschrap has been used by German-Turkish rap artists as a medium to reflect their views and identity. What is understood as the German-Turkish identity has been put up for debate as to whether it can be labeled as assimilated, integrated or something else entirely. By doing a close reading and analysis of three songs each from German-Turkish rap artists Alpa Gun, Eko Fresh and Mert, it is found that these three artists can be categorized as Ayhan Kaya’s hybrid-, boundaries-, and flows- transmigrant identity, respectively. This also shows that the German-Turkish identity is not …

Representation Matters: African American Female Readers’ Perceptions Of Young Adult Literature, Asia Harden

Honors Theses

In 2019, only 6% of U.S. children’s books published were written by black authors. This portion of the publishing industry, and particularly the category of young adult literature (YA) has room for improvement when it comes to African American representation. To identify how this lack of representation affects readers, this study was broken into two parts which resulted in obtaining the African American female YA author perspective, as well as African American female readers. J. Elle and Kristina Forest were interviewed in the first portion of the study, and three focus groups were conducted in the second study with 13 …

The Role Of The Kurds In U.S. Foreign Policy, Davis Mccool Iii

Honors Theses

The Kurdish people in the Middle East have played a valuable role in furthering U.S. policy interests in the region. The U.S. has aligned itself with various Kurdish groups in a series of strategic partnerships dating back to the early 1970s, yet has never considered the Kurdish nation an ally. As such, the U.S. has reneged on multiple different pacts with the Kurds and opened the door for state-sponsored conflict against a supposed ally, despite mutual interests between both groups. This thesis aimed to assign a formal role to the Kurds within U.S. foreign policy, and to analyze the function …

Being Female And Indigenous: Barriers To Reducing Bolivia's Maternal Mortality Rates Under Evo Morales, Channell Cole

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to answer the question: What are the barriers to attempts to reduce Bolivia’s maternal mortality rate under Evo Morales? While Morales’ presidency began in 2006, the timeline is from 2004 to the present to account for changes due to his policy. Using activity theory and social capital theory, I argue that machismo and racism are two social factors that are barriers to efforts to reduce the maternal mortality rate. Machismo manifests itself uniquely in Bolivia, as I argue through a comparison to Paraguay. Machismo is also riddled with a history of anti-indigenous racism. I examine the Rockefeller …

Captions For Covid? Hearing Accessibility In Virtual "Zoom" Theatre, Gianna Schuetz

Honors Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic shut the doors of theatres across the United States and the rest of the world. Live theatre came to a sudden halt as gatherings of people served as significant health risks. As live theatre performances became nearly obsolete, many theatre organizations were forced to creatively adapt to move their programming to a virtual format. Presenting theatre in a virtual format brings many challenges; however, it also brings opportunities for increased accessibility and access, particularly for individuals who are hard of hearing.

The following thesis explores hearing accessibility measures taken by theatre companies as they ventured into virtual …

A Comparison Of Approval Ratings Of Gender Inclusive Spanish Suffixes Between Learners And Speakers Of Spanish., Chandler Nichols

Honors Theses

The following study aimed to investigate the correlation between varying levels of Spanish learners who had taken different levels of Spanish courses, and fluent speakers and their approval ratings of gender inclusive suffixes in Spanish. The study used a survey in order to gather information and approval ratings. The results indicated that higher level Spanish learners on average had lower approval ratings of the three gender inclusive suffixes included in the survey.

A Stolen Culture: The Harmful Effects Of Cultural Appropriation, Amirah Lockhart

Honors Theses

Entertainment has always been an outlet from reality, no matter the culture. Whether in the form of music or television, entertainment has something for everyone. Different factors influence the content of the entertainment being consumed, but culture is one of the most important and decisive elements. The appropriation of entertainers in their work is not always immediately obvious to all consumers of entertainment, but members of the affected culture are quick to notice and usually shut out. I argue that the cultural appropriation of Black culture in most cases facilitates results that are harmful and damaging to the Black community. …